Monday, October 15, 2012

Attention is being paid to a new biannual Canadian magazine called The Alpine Reviewand it's partly because it costs $35 a copy. The magazine is published out of Montreal. The managing director and editor is Louis-Jacques Darveau and the editor is Patrick Tanguay, co-founder of Station C, the oldest co-working space in Canada, and a founding trustee of The Awesome Foundation.Their self-description for the first issue is

The Alpine Review is a bi-annual, comprehensive magazine that tracks changes in thought, systems and creations around the world.

We assemble emerging signals, connections and patterns and tie them together with the people, places and things that draw the attention of our team.

Magazines carry culture, concepts and inspiration in a pleasant and flexible format. Pass it from hand to hand to a friend, a coworker, a family member, lend it out, re-gift it, get it back and retire it to the bookshelf that your children will one day inherit. Print is not dead, it’s immortal.

The debut issue contains an article about contemporary magazine publishing called Magazines as identities and platforms by Kati Krause. Magculture.com (which alerted us to this new entrant) is complimentary about some of the elements, such as the first of what seems to be a series of city guides (about Berlin) and notes an article called Coffeeshopification about private public spaces where many independent culture workers hang off the wifi. However, it is also critical, thusly:

"If I have one doubt about the magazine it’s the design, which falls somewhere between a magazine and a more formal journal, and succeeds as neither. There is masses of great content and it’s all very legible but it lacks the character of better compiled magazines."

The magazine is offering free shipping on single issues and subscriptions for all orders and subs received in October.